dabe
Back when I was desiging my own parts, I landed on ponoko and sendcutsend for having the best pricing and quality.
Also, smart move with the Iris. I love the layout but having metal parts would make a huge difference.
Just in case no one comes along with a better answer; I would say it’s just too niche a use-case to expect a whole distro to be maintained for it. A super stable/popular distro like Ubuntu, Fedora, or Mint will be easy enough to use that I would consider downloading all the apps you’d need for writing to be feasible for a “non-technical” person. i.e., just as easy (if not easier, thanks to Flatpak) as doing so on Windows.
I specifically like to keep up with linux gaming news, so I have these two in my RSS feeds:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/
https://linuxgamingcentral.com/
They just make good informative posts in general, not always relating to Linux.